GERUND Poem by Bernard O’Donoghue

The only child of parents in their forties,
he grew up in a County Council cottage
by the roadside. They never knew what
to make of him, so when the teacher
from the National School urged them to send him
to the secondary, they let him go.

He never said that much: but enough to show
he had more brains than all the rest of us
put together. When Joe Garvey asked
‘What part of speech is desperandum?',
trembling, he volunteered ‘a gerund',
and then translated ‘what must be despaired of'.

How did he know? At the end of the first year
he chose to stay at home. Again a teacher
called to the cottage in despair, begging
them to send him back, but his father said
with a shrug ‘whatever he says himself'.
He said he wanted just to stay at home.

The only time I saw him afterwards
(at least I think it was him), drunk
at a local dance when the rest of us
were home on holidays from college, his speech
was slurred, and he could barely stand.
‘I'm better off the way I am,' he told us.